


Death’s Loving Embrace

by lunadesangre



Series: Lifers [5]
Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-07
Updated: 2011-11-07
Packaged: 2017-10-25 19:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunadesangre/pseuds/lunadesangre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grief'll always fuck up a guy, especially with guilt piled on top of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death’s Loving Embrace

He runs hours every night. In his head. Outwardly he's calm, unmoving, dead. He _feels_ dead – but his brain won't shut up. Never has, even when he still felt alive. Every little loose end of every little plan... Every little twitch of everybody else, every possible consequence, he _needs_ to analyze. Always has.

Now, it's in past tense: every little thing he could have said, done, manipulated someone into doing, begged for – every little thing that could have saved his brother. It keeps him up all the fucking time. Makes him wish for oblivion. Present tense reality goes farther and farther away, sleep a fading, distant memory – like Cyril's real smile, back when he wasn't brain-damaged. It haunts him, all blurry twisted hallucinations, never quite there, never quite gone, guilt twisting his guts like a hungry monster. All the _what if_ s.

During the day, he walks around in a daze, Em-city's resident ghost, going where he’s required to, cleaning bedpans, seeing his Ma. He's distantly aware that for her sake, he should be more careful, should keep track of all the scumfucks around him, the potential threats, the potential deaths. They're more real than his hallucinations, more deadly, he knows that.

But nowadays, deadly is beginning to sound like a longed-for promise.


End file.
